IoTactileSim: A Virtual Testbed for Tactile Industrial Internet of Things Services

With the inclusion of tactile Internet (TI) in the industrial sector, we are at the doorstep of the tactile Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This provides the ability for the human operator to control and manipulate remote industrial environments in real-time. The TI use cases in IIoT demand a communication network, including ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, availability, and security. Additionally, the lack of the tactile IIoT testbed has made it more severe to investigate and improve the quality of services (QoS) for tactile IIoT applications. In this work, we propose a virtual testbed called IoTactileSim, that offers implementation, investigation, and management for QoS provisioning in tactile IIoT services. IoTactileSim utilizes a network emulator Mininet and robotic simulator CoppeliaSim to perform real-time haptic teleoperations in virtual and physical environments. It provides the real-time monitoring of the implemented technology parametric values, network impairments (delay, packet loss), and data flow between operator (master domain) and teleoperator (slave domain). Finally, we investigate the results of two tactile IIoT environments to prove the potential of the proposed IoTactileSim testbed.

Experience of Using Clinical Scenarios to Practice Resuscitation and Stabilization Skills of Newborns in the Delivery Room on Highly Realistic Mannequins

The article presents the experience of practicing the skills of providing resuscitation care to newborns in the delivery room by neonatologists, pediatricians, resuscitators and ambulance doctors on a highly realistic multifunctional robotic simulator of a full-term newborn baby SimNewB, a highly realistic dummy of a premature newborn in the framework of the Premature anne system plus control system in the proposed scenario for different clinical situations.

A Soft Robotic Simulator for Transseptal Puncture Training

Transseptal puncture (TP) is the technique used to access the left atrium of the heart from the right atrium via the interatrial septum in increasingly common catheter-based procedures such as atrial fibrillation ablation. Through repetition, experienced TP operators develop manual skills to manipulate the transseptal catheter assembly inside the right atrium to their target on the fossa ovalis. New operators currently train on actual patients to develop this skill, resulting in increased risk of dangerous complications. To create low-risk training opportunities for new TP operators, we are developing a Soft Active Transseptal Puncture Simulator (SATPS), designed to match the dynamics, kinetostatics, and visualization of the heart during TP. The SATPS includes three main subsystems: (i) An anatomically accurate soft right atrium, fitted with pneumatic artificial muscles, mimics the dynamics of the heart felt by the operator through the catheter assembly. (ii) A replaceable, puncturable fossa ovalis simulates the tissue properties of the real fossa to provide accurate kinetostatic force feedback during tenting and puncture. (iii) A simulated intracardiac echocardiography environment gives the user live visual feedback representative of an ultrasound monitor during an actual TP procedure. The SATPS is an ongoing project, with validation and design improvements forthcoming.

Supervised Learning of Natural-Terrain Traversability with Synthetic 3D Laser Scans

Autonomous navigation of ground vehicles on natural environments requires looking for traversable terrain continuously. This paper develops traversability classifiers for the three-dimensional (3D) point clouds acquired by the mobile robot Andabata on non-slippery solid ground. To this end, different supervised learning techniques from the Python library Scikit-learn are employed. Training and validation are performed with synthetic 3D laser scans that were labelled point by point automatically with the robotic simulator Gazebo. Good prediction results are obtained for most of the developed classifiers, which have also been tested successfully on real 3D laser scans acquired by Andabata in motion.

A Robotic Glenohumeral Simulator for Investigating Prosthetic Implant Subluxation

Total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA) is an effective treatment for glenohumeral (GH) osteoarthritis. However, it still suffers from a substantial rate of mechanical failure, which may be related to cyclic off-center loading of the humeral head on the glenoid. In this work, we present the design and evaluation of a GH joint robotic simulator developed to study GH translations. This five-degree-of-freedom robot was designed to replicate the rotations (±40 deg, accuracy 0.5 deg) and three-dimensional (3D) forces (up to 2 kN, with a 1% error settling time of 0.6 s) that the humeral implant exerts on the glenoid implant. We tested the performances of the simulator using force patterns measured in real patients. Moreover, we evaluated the effect of different orientations of the glenoid implant on joint stability. When simulating realistic dynamic forces and implant orientations, the simulator was able to reproduce stable behavior by measuring the translations of the humeral head of less than 24 mm with respect to the glenoid implant. Simulation with quasi-static forces showed dislocation in extreme ranges of implant orientation. The robotic GH simulator presented here was able to reproduce physiological GH forces and may therefore be used to further evaluate the effects of glenoid implant design and orientation on joint stability.